By Laura Fitzpatrick

Along with detailing his age and weight, Monty’s profile proclaims his love for the beach and taking walks. Another profile, belonging to Marley Sue, gushes, “I will occasionally give you love bites on your feet and toes especially if you’re wearing socks!” A third profile — Fletcher’s — is more philosophical: “Life is too short to behave for too long.”

No, this isn’t some new online dating site. This is Doggyspace.com, a social networking site for dogs. Launched in July, the site already has nearly 700,000 users and is the newest pup in a growing litter of online communities for pets. Members (or presumably their two-legged companions) create profiles — including photos, videos and blogs — and befriend other like-minded animals; soon they will also be able to form groups and forums. “Owners take a backseat,” says Doggyspace founder and CEO Levi Thornton. “It’s all about the dog.”

Online networks targeting pet lovers are common, but a growing subset is catering to the pets themselves, including MyCatSpace.com and Petster.com (remember Friendster?). Pets write messages to each other about shared interests and offer advice on health problems, training or local dog-friendly parks. Some have even enlisted their caretakers to arrange offline play dates. “Animals are natural social networking beasts,” says Noah Paessel, CEO of SNIF Labs, a tech firm started by a group of MIT Media Lab graduate students to study “social networking in fur.”

Kathryn Galbraith, 24, created a Doggyspace profile to get the word out about her pit bull-lab mix, Joe. “Writing from his perspective lets other people know how great of a dog he is,” says the marketing project manager in Frederick, Md. Galbraith notes that it took her four years to make 158 friends on MySpace while Joe has racked up 85 friends in just one month on Doggyspace. “My dog is more popular than I am,” she says.

The site is also a hit among people who find traditional forms of social networking too invasive. “It’s non-threatening,” says Dale Miller, 55, who does not use Facebook or MySpace but who updates the Doggyspace page daily for her bulldog mix, Etta. “It’s for you, not necessarily about you.”

The site relies heavily on role-play as owners imagine what Spot might be thinking when “Mommy” has a late night at work or expound the virtues of a new chew toy. Which means that at its core, sites like Doggyspace may not be all that different from traditional social networking. In the end, says Thornton, even when people are barking on behalf of their pets, “Everybody’s pretty much talking about themselves.”

But sites like Doggyspace could be the wave of the future. As social networking changes from a buzzword to an increasingly regular part of life, SNIF Labs’ chief technology officer Jonathan Gips says online communities based on a common interest will become more prevalent. “There will be more niches,” he says. Already Doggyspace is starting to attract non-canine species: a white rabbit named Nixie writes on her profile, “I am a bunny, but I joined this because there is no BunnySpace.” Yet.

The Myspace-YouTube hybrid dedicated to dogs, Doggyspace, was launched in mid-July. The site was in need of publicity – a buzz –to motivate individuals to visit the site and sign-up for an account. Through the process of launch releases and consistent story pitching, Aduro was able to secure a spotlight article by Associated Press. The story hit the press on August 6, 2008. And within hours the story was picked up in all major national broadcast, print and web media. Within only a few more additional hours, the story was picked up in Russia, Australia and the United Kingdom, just to name a few. Not only did the site membership sky-rocket from 500 accounts to 8,000 in one day, but other national outlets such as Time and Fox News along with outlets in Turkey, Italy and Brazil were creating their own story to cover the dog-friendly site, wanting to interview owner and creator, Levi Thornton, and users of the site.

Below are just a few of the hits Doggyspace received due to the work of Aduro:

Boston Globe
Baltimore Sun
Bismarck Tribune
Canoe Canada
CNN International
Forbes
Fox News
New York Times International Edition
San Francisco Chronicle
Time
Washington Post

Need to generate your own buzz?  Contact us to see what our agency can do for your business.

Aduro’s sunny new home is located at Everedy Square across the street from the Frederick Post Office. Everyone is very excite about this space since it provides a more cohesive working environment and more importantly the one thing we’ve missed… windows!

Pictures of our space will be posted on this blog and our website soon.

Maryland Builder calls for volunteers for its Extreme Dream Team

Rockville, Md. – June 10, 2008 – Classic Homes of Maryland today announced they will join ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for the upcoming build later this month. The Rockville builder was selected to oversee and implement an intense one-week build that will change the life of a deserving Maryland family. Classic Homes of Maryland is best known for its work with customers who own land and are seeking an affordable, but high-quality alternative to a custom designed and built home.

Classic Homes of Maryland is requesting volunteers in the community to provide their time, support and resources to help ensure the success of this life-changing project. Interested individuals or companies can find more information on the many ways to volunteer and show their support at the recently launched Classic Homes of Maryland Extreme Makeover: Home Edition website, which can be accessed through www.classicmd.net.

Classic Homes of Maryland was chosen largely because of their business philosophy. As a community builder, Classic Homes of Maryland strongly believes in donating to worthy causes. Every year, a significant amount of their profits are donated to the DD Puri Foundation (www.ddpuri.org) which seeks to empower marginalized communities and individuals around the world through education and health initiatives.

Of their selection, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition executive producer Conrad Rickettes says, “Classic Homes of Maryland is a community-focused business. Their devotion to giving back is what first caught our eye, and their long-standing tradition of charitable and community involvement assured us that they were the perfect builder for this project.”

Amita Jain, Vice President and Co-Founder at Classic Homes of Maryland, says of the project, “We are very excited and honored by our selection. It’s a privilege to give back to our community by helping a local family. And what better gift could be given than a house to make their own? We’re especially looking forward to the reveal day, when all of our hard work will be rewarded by the joy of the family.”

For more information on the project, and how you can help, please visit www.classicmd.net and follow the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition link.

About Classic Homes of Maryland Classic Homes of Maryland, based in Rockville, Maryland, builds affordable, high-quality homes on its customers land. Customers choose from a wide variety of home designs, finding a plan that is the perfect fit for their lot and their lifestyle. For more information visit www.classicmd.net or call 301-251-2001.

About ABC-TVs Extreme Makeover: Home Edition “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” which has won back-to-back Emmy Awards as Best Reality Program (non-competitive), is entering its 6th season on ABC. The program is produced by Endemol USA, a division of Endemol Holding. Conrad Rickettes is the executive producer; and David Goldberg is the president of Endemol USA.

After upgrading to Leopard (including the latest update) we noticed a few issues with InDesign. It would crash whenever you wanted to save a file or even save a pdf, which seemed to stem from opening up the “OS Dialog” window. After searching multiple forums to find a workaround or a complete solution there were few to be found. Some mentioned that this CS2 problem wouldn’t be fixed by Adobe or Apple. Also read that some CS3 users are having the same problem. Why?

One workaround was to use the “Adobe Dialog” window instead of the “OS Dialog” window. Open InDesign then select File and Open, at the bottom of the screen there’s a button listed as “Use Adobe Dialog”. This seemed to work at first but it still crashed when saving pdf files. Clearing your InDesign prefs file seemed to work at first, but after opening and closing multiple files crashing continued.

Fast forward a few weeks…
Taking notice of how I was opening InDesign files I found that opening files directly from withing InDesign (still using the Adobe Dialog) instead of double clicking on the file from Finder produced surprising results. No crashing when saving or creating pdf files! We’ll keep tabs on how this works over time and update this posting.

Another issue I’ve noticed since upgrading to Leopard is that Dreamweaver, InDesign and Photoshop don’t want to minimize when asked to. Usually have to close the application then reopen. Annoying but at least they’re not crashing. Any fixes to this problem let me know.